Blood Moon's Servant: A Paranormal Thriller Read online

  She was shaking now, trembling from head to toe. Slowly, so slowly, he reached for her, giving her every opportunity to pull away. He wouldn’t push it. He would let her go if she did. She didn’t. Delight exploded in his soul as he held her for the first time. He stroked her hair and cupped her cheek in his palm. “I can help you,” he whispered. He ran his thumb over the bruise, using darkness, for the first time ever, to heal instead of hurt.

  She blinked tearfully up at him, wonder in her gentle eyes. “You’re a super?”

  It was hard to think with his arms encircling her. “You’re enlightened?”

  “No. Unawakened, apparently.” She touched her face. “It feels better.”

  He smiled down at her. “Good.”

  He was wrenched from the memory and pitched forward through time. Screams echoed in his ears. Pain, hate, anguish, rage. They tumbled over one another in an endless cycle of loss. He was thrown back onto the airplane couch amidst a cacophony of shrieking voices. Ghostly apparitions of her flooded the cabin. Some had crimson stains down their fronts, others were missing limbs. Each face was contorted in an endless screech of agony.

  An apparition more terrible and gruesome than the rest stepped forward to address him. The others wailed and flailed around her, an endless backdrop of torture. “What if I never died? What if I have been a prisoner in that house for years, and you left me there to him?” Alex gritted his teeth and refused to react. The quicker he responded, the longer they’d stay. “What if I’m alive? What if I’m rotting in an attic, abused every single day because you abandoned me?”

  “I never abandoned you! You abandoned me. You’re not here. You are dead and happy and better off without me.”

  “You got that right.” The apparition gave him a poisonous smile that had no business being on her sweet face. “I am much better off without you.”

  “Alex! Alex! Alex, wake up!”

  His eyes flew open. He gasped and choked and sat up coughing. Nova stood over him, her face nearly as white as the ghosts that were no longer there. “You were screaming! I’ve been trying to wake you for ages.”

  “Go away.” The plane shuttered and dipped into a sickening dive. “Roy? What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got a bit of turbulence, and the engine’s acting up.” The plane bucked beneath them.

  “Roy!”

  “Not to worry, Mr. Cardelle. It’s all under control. We’re nearing the end of our descent.”

  Chris burst from the master bedroom. Alex rushed into the cockpit. Red lights were flashing all over Roy’s consul. “Stupid angel. You’re gonna regret this, Kimmy.” Alex ghosted through the floor and dropped like a stone toward the ground far, far below.

  Forty-one

  AMY CROSSED HER arms over her chest and scowled at Max. Just looking into his eyes made her squirm with guilt. Why did he have to go and say he loved her? Why did she even care? She wanted to be angry with him, not feel sorry for him. But what had the last few years put him through? What had it been like to continue living in that town with all that judgment and all that hate? Amy had moved away and escaped the stigma of Katie’s death. Max had had no such luxury.

  She shook her head in an effort to clear it. So what if he had feelings for her? He deserved the punishment he was sure to receive. She chewed her lip and stared straight ahead. Max’s impending arrest was reminding her of Peter’s and how unfair his two years in prison had been. She ground her jaw, frazzled frustration gnawing at her core. She wanted to be a cop, and stupid Max had her doubting the law.

  “What you thinking about?” Amy startled at his lowered voice. Max hadn’t said a word since Zack and Damien had gone upstairs to sleep.

  “You,” she answered with a bitter edge to the word.

  “Fantastic fantasies?”

  Amy threw a cushion at him. It bounced off his head and dropped to the floor. “You’re so full of it. I was wondering what will happen to you after we contact the police.”

  “I’ll get arrested and go to prison. What’s there to wonder about?”

  Amy threw her hands into the air. “Why did you do this, Max? You know this will go on your permanent record.”

  He pouted his full lips. “Maybe I needed to see you again. To tell you how sorry I am and how much I hate myself for what happened to Katie.”

  “Oh, please. There are easier ways to do that than kidnapping me and threatening my boyfriend.”

  “True. I was drunk when I texted Alex about Zack. I wasn’t thinking. I’m not saying that makes it okay,” he added swiftly.

  “You regret what you did, huh? I’ve heard that one before.”

  His expression hardened. “You should know better than anyone how hard it is to undo your mistakes.”

  She shut her eyes and unwillingly flashed to a scarring snippet of childhood trauma. She was peeking out her bedroom window at six years old and trying to get a glimpse of the police car idling in her family’s driveway. Her parents were screaming at each other in their yard from ten feet apart. Justin was in the living room, being questioned by a cop. Fear flooded her mind. Amy took off for shelter without a single backward glance. She dashed out her back door with tears burning her eyes and climbed the fence to Max’s yard in a grief-stricken haze. Her best friend met her halfway across his lawn. She cried on Max’s shoulder as an officer put her dad in handcuffs and drove him away. Mr. O’Neil made them hot chocolate, and she begged to sleep over.

  Her father’s chilling words from that seemingly innocent letter framed the fading photographs of memory. Bile rose in her throat. She shoved his words deep down and crammed them into a dark crevice of her mind. Mr. O’Neil had been a much better father to Amy than her own. She had spent twice as much time at Max’s place than hers. Her heart twisted at the thought of her oldest friend in prison. She crushed her pain into diamonds of strength. She, Amy, would fix his mess. Max had been her shelter as a child. Now it was her turn to be his.

  She raised her eyes to Max’s. “You’re not going to jail.”

  “How do you figure?”

  Amy flicked her gaze around the room in search of inspiration. “This was my idea. You pretended to kidnap me so Alex would abandon the kids in Toronto. We had no idea Zack and Damien would get involved, but we worked around it as best we could.”

  “What are you talking about?” Max gaped at her, comically confused.

  “I’ll lie for you, okay?” She threw her hands into the air, annoyed he hadn’t caught on yet. “I’ll say whatever needs to be said in order to clear your name, as long as you promise you’ll help me stop Alex.”

  Max straightened from his trademark slouch, his crystal eyes alight with hope. “That’s just crazy enough to work. We can tell Alex I captured all of you. He’ll never expect me to turn on him.”

  “Exactly.” Amy nodded, her stomach swirling with unease. Three lives were on the line. Hers, Zack’s, and Damien’s. She was risking them all for Max, a guy who had abducted her and betrayed Zack to a psycho.

  Max held out his hand. “Pass me the gun.”

  “Right now? This second?” Amy teetered on the edge of her decision.

  “Trust me.” Max met her gaze with nothing but sincerity in his crystal blue eyes. “I told you, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Or Zack and Damien?”

  “I swear on Katie’s life I’m completely on your side.”

  “Max.” She drew his name into two annoyed syllables. Her baby sister meant more to them than anything else in the world. And Max had sworn on her life. Her unease faded. She took a breath for courage and lowered the gun into his hands.

  “That was anticlimactic.” Max smirked.

  “I heard drums in the background.”

  He flashed her a grin and leapt to his feet. “Let’s round up our prisoners.”

  Amy followed him upstairs, muttering as she went. “First, I was the prisoner. Then you. Now me, Zack, and Damien. What is this, musical chairs with handcuffs?”

  “T
he music will stop on Alex.” He crept up to her bedroom door and gently eased it open. He kept the G19 trained on her and pointed his own .44 at Zack. “Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

  Zack jolted awake and stared at the gun in a wide-eyed state of shock-induced horror. Guilt snaked through Amy and blanketed her hope in squirmy clouds of regret. Zack gave her a concerned once over. Max leered. The guilt in her gut multiplied like a colony of out-of-control bacteria. Zack must think she was an absolute idiot. Letting Max escape after all they had been through to free her was moronic lunacy.

  “Don’t shoot her.” Zack slid out of bed and joined them in the doorway.

  “Oh my God.” Damien had spoken from the entrance to her parents’ bedroom.

  Max pointed both guns at Amy. “Do what I say, or I’ll kill her. Everyone back to the living room.” He hadn’t mastered the art of colorful death threats like Alex had. The guns simply spoke for themselves. Zack and Damien trudged ahead of her down the stairs. Max brought up the rear, grinning from ear to ear. Amy glowered over her shoulder. He was enjoying this a little too much.

  Damien and Zack sat on opposite ends of the couch. Amy perched between them and searched Max’s face for signs of anxiety, like a nervous eye twitch or a tensed jaw muscle. He looked smug and full of it, classic Max. He was doing an unnerving job of playing the villain. Unease curled in her stomach. Either her former best friend had developed a card shark poker face, or he had royally screwed her over.

  She glanced sideways at Damien and caught him eyeing her with a frown. She squirmed and looked away. Had he figured out she was lying? Was he on to her and Max?

  Max kept the G19 trained on Amy and tugged his phone from his pocket left-handed. He fiddled with it for a moment and put it to his ear. “I have the most amazing news. I have Zack, Amy, and Damien Gray.”

  “Damien Green,” Amy corrected helpfully.

  Max shook his head. “Some kid Amy and I went to school with. Okay, good. I’ll see you in a few hours, then.”

  The name, Damien Gray, rang distant bells of recognition. Amy jerked in her seat and gaped at Damien in wide-eyed shock. “You stabbed Jackson!”

  “You let your sister drown, and I never called you out on that,” Damien said.

  “There’s a difference.”

  “Yeah. Jackson deserved what he got.”

  “Hold up.” Zack struggled to keep pace with the conversation. “You stabbed my new roommate?”

  Max nodded. “Damien, Jackson, and I were pals back in the day.”

  “Then Damien and Jackson went to prison, and you went off to Psychopath Camp,” Amy said.

  She shuttered to imagine what Zack must be thinking. Katie’s death was just the tip of the iceberg of her dark and twisted past. What was he going to do when he found out she had lied to him for three days straight?

  Max shot Zack an evil grin and motioned for him to cuff Damien. Next, he pointed the gun at Amy and jerked it toward Zack. She tied her boyfriend’s hands behind his back with her anxiety hitting an all-time high. Why had she given Max so much power? This put even her definition of reckless to shame.

  Max kissed her as he cuffed her wrists. She clamped her lips tight shut and glared. Zack looked about to hurl. Amy seethed. None of this had been part of their plan.

  Forty-two

  CHARLES STOOD ALONGSIDE Kimmy and Peter near the edge of a brightly lit runway. They were skulking in the shadow of a tiny airport four hours outside Vancouver. Kimmy was serenely certain Alex’s plane was on its way. She must have pried the information from his mind. Charles shot her an admiring look. Kimmy handled Darks as though she were a calm, collected parent and they were misbehaving children. He wished he could deal with them with such effortless ease.

  A distant rumble drowned the chirping of the crickets. Charles looked up into the starlit night and spotted a jet beginning its descent. He flung sharp wind currents into the sky. They caught the jet’s wings and tossed the small aircraft about like a cork on a stormy sea. Charles allowed himself a taut smile. That ought to distract Alex while Kimmy wrapped the humans in holy light.

  Peter trained his eyes on the aircraft. “Show time.”

  Charles cut him a scathing glance. “Be quiet. I’m trying to concentrate.”

  “Silence, both of you.” Kimmy stood perfectly still, every ounce of her attention devoted to the jet. “Okay,” she breathed. “I have Chris, Nova, and the pilot. Charles, do it!”

  Charles set fire to the fuel tank and counted backward from five. The plane blew up in a blaze of fire. Debris plummeted to Earth like a mist of falling stars. Charles threw his fists into the air on a rush of glorious victory. He hoped with all his heart Alex’s body was among the burning bits of airplane.

  Chris, Nova, and a chubby, bald man in an ill-fitting pilot's uniform materialized in front of their eyes. Chris was smiling. The other two wore frozen expressions of shock. The trio looked windswept but unhurt.

  Peter hugged Nova tight. Her face was chalk white.

  “Hey, Charles.” Chris’s smile grew at the sight of him. He was handling their jarring escape a million times better than Nova.

  “Hey! Glad you’re all right.” Charles shot Kimmy a worried glance. Her face was expressionless, her shoulders tense. “Is everything okay? It worked, right?” A hint of uncertainty crept into his voice.

  Nova whirled on him with fury in her ocean blue eyes. “You killed my brother!”

  A wall of darkness shot from her hands. Charles dove out of the way in the nick of time and slammed into the ground harder than he had expected. “Get a grip! It was the only way to stop him!”

  Chris caught her arm to prevent her from charging him again. Peter spoke to her in low, calming tones. Charles widened the gap between himself and Nova. Kimmy paid them no mind. Anxiety ballooned in his stomach like an airbag ready to deploy. Something was terribly, horribly wrong.

  Knives appeared in Peter’s and the pilot’s hands. The pilot turned on Charles; Peter rounded on Kimmy. He stumbled unsteadily toward her with his eyes glassy and his face slack. Charles clenched his jaw against a burst of white-hot hate. Alex was trying to control the humans, a classic move on his part. But this time, Peter was fighting back.

  The pilot roared and charged Charles with his meaty hands outstretched to throttle him. Charles lifted the ground beneath the man’s feet and tilted it forward on a wobbly forty-five-degree slope. The pilot sprawled in the dirt with a startled yelp and an oaf of pain. Charles plucked the knife from his flailing hands. A nearby bush grew long, plant tendrils and ensnared the pilot in a thick, vegetable net. Charles smirked as it twisted the pilot into a human pretzel.

  He spun back to Kimmy and froze with his heart in his throat. Peter had her backed against the squad car with his knife a foot from her chest. Chris and Nova stood paralyzed nearby.

  Charles scrambled to his feet and slipped into Peter’s head. Alex’s thoughts had invaded his mind and latched onto every insecurity and fear Peter had ever had. Stab her, a foreign presence urged. She doesn’t care about you. She’s using you, just like Chelsea did. Come on, it’ll feel good. Make a girl pay for treating you like crap for once.

  Peter, don’t listen to him. Charles’s voice was muffled and distorted. Alex’s was crystal clear.

  “Kimmy! Do something!” Charles said out loud.

  Her eyes shown with tears. “I can’t hurt him. He’s innocent.” Kimmy stood frozen in place, staring into Peter’s sea green eyes with a look of purest sorrow.

  “You don’t have to hurt him, damn it. Just get out of the way!” Charles slipped into Kimmy’s head and recoiled in pain. An endless howl of terror all but deafened him. Fragmented thoughts whizzed around her mind, occasionally colliding to make the odd incoherent sentence.

  Charles battled Alex for control of Peter’s mind and fought tooth and nail to help Kimmy calm down. Alex was making her hallucinate. She was watching a brown-eyed boy do terrible things to everyone she had ever loved. Charles forced an image
of Peter into her thoughts and tried to help her focus on his face. Tears rolled down her perfect cheeks.

  Peter raised his knife with shaking hands. Charles fought to make him stop. His body trembled with the mental strain. Sweat poured into his eyes. Peter pulled his arm back, seconds from plunging the knife into Kimmy’s aching heart.

  He made a mind link with the last person he wanted to, the only person he knew who had the power to beat Alex. Damien! I’m here with Kimmy, and Alex is winning. I need your help! Every word was a nail in his coffin, but Charles knew he had no other choice. He couldn’t stop Alex alone, and if not stopped, Kimmy would die.

  I have my own stuff going on. Damien’s reply was clipped.

  This is your chance to take on Alex. Prove you’re as badass as you claim.

  Bring me up to speed. Damien followed the link to Kimmy’s mind and mentally flinched as her thoughts collided with his. Damn. This girl be very messed up.

  Kimmy and I blew up Alex’s jet, but Alex annoyingly survived. Now he’s trying to make Peter kill Kimmy. He’s winning, even though Peter is putting up a pretty good fight.

  Okay. Let’s give up on the angel. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but there’s no way we’re gonna be able to chill her out in time. They jumped ship to Peter’s mind and tried to steady his whirling thoughts. Hey, Peter, it’s Damien. You know who I am, you trust me. Lower that knife before you hurt someone.

  The blade in Peter’s hand jerked and twitched as if it had a life of its own. Queasiness churned in Charles’s gut. Influencing Peter was taking too long. Alex had decided to hurl the knife at Kimmy with a tendril of darkness, instead. Peter gripped the thrashing blade with both hands. He wrenched it further away from Kimmy but closer to his own chest.

  “I don’t want to hurt her.” He gasped as sweat dripped into his eyes. His breathing was ragged, and he looked about to pass out. Sympathy welled within Charles along with an unexpected wave of admiration. The mental stress of having three supernatural minds linked to his would have crippled most humans.